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Bomberman Hero is a platform game developed by Hudson Soft and distributed by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64.
The story taken from the english manual is as it follows:
"Bomberman was training very hard day and night at Bomber Base to keep the universe peaceful.
One day, he received an order to check out a spaceship that had crashed in the Peace Mountains. When our hero arrived at the scene, he found a strange looking robot. According to this robot, the planet Primus Star was attacked by the Garaden Empire. This robot was able to escape with Princess Millian of Primus Star via spaceship, but the Garaden Empire captured them and took the princess away...
To help out, Bomberman left his home and embarked on a journey to save Princess Millian!"
I've heard the story is heavily similar to Star Wars which is neat. I never watched any Star Wars movie yet so i didn't caught on this (I'm a fake nerd, sorry!).
The story is pretty simple and the dialogue is very goofy- goofy in a "we didn't really develop the story because that's the least important thing" way-, and sometimes the dialogues make me think of when you try to use Google Translate to translate japanese to english, or a AI sloppily creating silly dialogues.
But that's the least important feature of the game, so for me it's excusable.
Long answer:
Short answer:
Bombermam hero is your average 3D platform game, except the controls are a bit wonky(but that's your average N64 platform game).
Bomberman can jump, place bombs, kick bombs, throw bombs, jump and kick bombs, and throw mega bombs by shaking his arms. The bombs are the coolest part of the game.
There were 5 areas (plus two secret areas) with 4 to 7 stages each. And in some of those stages you could play with the Bomber Jet, the Bomber Marine, the Bomber Copter, and the Bomber Slider.
And sometimes you would get a cute green bunny kangaroo mount thing called Louie. I love Louie!
I'd say one of the main selling points and "replayability" of Bomberman Hero is its score system. Attaining the perfect score for each stage is not only encouraged but required, since to go to the next area (and to certain stages too, if i recall correctly) a certain score amount is asked.
Two special areas can be even unlocked if you get a high enough score!
The score can be increased by defeating enemies, collecting gems (just like in a collectathon) or power ups, or destroying objects.
The best part of the game. Really.
If you don't believe what I'm sayin' just check the mix i linked below.
The soundtrack was made by Jun "Chiki" Chikuma, famous for her contributions to the Bomberman games. The soundtrack has elements of Drum n' Bass, Jungle Music, Hip Hop, Breakbeat and Detroit Techno, and it also uses a lot of ambience sounds.
The music in the game has a very distinct identity, sounding incredibly mature, catchy and unique. And the songs have some weird industrial sounding names like Vehicle, Oropharynx and Foehn. I think that's pretty cool, giving weird names to your songs is nice.
Have this pretty neat mix of Bomberman Hero. There's a link to download this mix at the description of the video:
Yeah. The camera was... mildly annoying.
Unlike the Super Mario 64 camera, at least it was fixed, so it wouldn't annoyingly turn around on its own like a living thing and fuck up your jump; but they were aaaaaalmost there with Bomberman Hero. But the camera was still a issue sometimes.
To be fair the camera wasn't exactly fixed- you could lightly tilt it to the left, to the right, up and down, but this would only work if Bomberman wasn't moving. But it was kinda janky and bothersome... The N64 had some pretty bad cameras lol.
I was around 4 years old when i first played this game. I remember my mom had bought me one of those CDs that have 1000 games on them. Sometimes those CDs are a big scam, sometimes they're really worth your money, and this CD was the last case.
The CD was a Project 64 emulator with a lot of Nintendo 64 games, but at the time neither me nor my mom knew what a emulator was.
She booted up the CD and struggled a bit to install it, because she was never super tech savvy, but she did her best and installed it for me.
I barely knew how to read and write, specially anything in english (I'm brazillian), but i was so happy and so eager to play the game that i didn't even care about the letters on the screen that were just pleasant gibberish. Bomberman 64 was one of the first games I've ever played in my life and one of the first Nintendo 64 games i've ever played.
When i played it i found the game pretty mind blowing. 3D low poly graphics and a intro with super fast drums and weird sounding instruments... Yeah, it was the coolest thing ever for a 4 year old.
I remember some funny things about the game. Despite its name, i always assumed Bomberman was a girl because pink shoes lol. My mom wasn't capable of telling that little thing's gender either but she pointed out to me that bomber, in our language mean something like "bombardeiro", and man in our language means "homem". But little me just shrugged it off since he has a pretty cute and feminine sounding voice and i just assumed it was a girl.
I also remember spending a good time on one of the stage just vibing to the music... I think the music of the first stages was Redial? Well, Redial is the one that stuck around the most with me. The sweet contrast between fast drums and a mellow shopping center melody also stuck around with me.
There was this one stage in the first area that had those rolling stairs and for some reason it would really make me think a lot of a shopping center, and it had Redial playing.
I love Oropharynx, but it really makes me remember of those mountain/cave stages that the game had and oh god were they annoying... Ack, the camera was really a bother on those moments.
I've played this game years ago so I'm sorry for not remembering all the details anymore, but this game is very nice. Sure, the secret areas may not be as satisfying as they shoupd be for being secret, but this game is truly a piece of art. The story, despite being simple and cheesy, is fun and easy to follow around, the ending is enjoyable, the levels are creative and fun, and the music is a piece of art.
So, if you have some free time get a emulator or a physical N64 and play Bomberman Hero. I'm sure it'll be worth it.
